MPD working to address lack of training exposed by rise in cycling

Authorities and advocates alike are struggling to keep up with a crowd of riders whose skills range from expert to novice in an already congested city.

I know the line about "congested" is added in their for effect, but in general, cycling reduces congestion. Anyway on to the factoids

According to rush-hour counts conducted in 20 intersections throughout the city each year by the District Department of Transportation, bike traffic during those peak times surged an average of 20.7 percent from 2010 to 2011, with 7,113 total bikes moving through those intersections. Nearly 25 percent of those riders weren’t wearing helmets, according to count data.

Compared with overall ridership, the actual number of reported collisions is small, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the problem is much bigger. Police have logged 829 reported bicycle collisions in the District in that time frame.

Since Bikeshare’s inception, 20 collisions have been reported by people using the system, a small number when one considers that 93,082 Bikeshare trips were taken in the District in January alone. But when crashes do happen, injury rates are high— two-thirds of bike accidents injured one or more people involved, according to police data.

WABA has collected some data showing that crashes are underreported, which is pretty obvious and true of driving and walking too.

They cite examples of cyclists getting erroneous tickets for not wearing a helmet or riding abreast when no other cyclist is around, which an MPD spokesman said was indicative of a need for more training.

“The most important thing we can do is to educate both the motoring public and the biking community about the laws,” Crump said.

Personally, I've been impressed with MPD lately and their efforts to improve. They send representatives to the BAC meetings. They're engaged and follow up on emails. They're working with WABA on some initiatives. There's every sign that more training is going on. And I get that there are a lot of laws to know and a lot of opportunities to get them wrong. So, I think right now the status is that things are not where they should be yet, but MPD appears to be moving in the right direction.

There is no law against one-handed riding, so there's nothing to police. I ride one-handed all the time -- I have bar-end shifters so I have to take my hand of the bar to shift -- and I have no problem. It's no bigger deal than driving with one hand.

What I was dismayed with in the article was the emphasis on helmets. For adult riders riding in traffic helmets offer essentially zero protection. They are ineffectual against the greatest risk, getting hit by a car, and they are not designed to provide protection against that kind of impact.

@Contrarian: You can cite all the data you want, but my wife was t-boned (by a driver passing stopped traffic in the shoulder) and left a helmet-shaped hole in a windshield before being thrown twenty feet. Thanks, but I'll keep wearing a helmet and gently encouraging others to do so (on the other hand, I won't support a law to require adults to wear them).

I'm a helmetist myself. You crack up a couple and you tend to become a believer. They're not perfect--I wiped out this winter and whacked my head but good, without leaving so much as a scratch on the helmet--but when they work, they're great.

I'm all for counting helmets. Of course, I'd like us to also track injury types too. Does a drop in helmet use coincide with an increase in skull fractures? That would interesting to know. But I also like tracking things that are known to cause crashes like riding against traffic, not using lights etc...

The odd thing is that people are upset that CaBi users don't generally wear helmets. But I'm excited that they always use lights. I'll take that trade every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

I wear a helmet when I ride my own bike, but do not when I ride CaBi. I think it's generally smart to wear a helmet, and I'd recommend it to anyone who asks...but I think they should only be mandatory for kids, as the current laws are written. Of course there will be times when helmets help, but so would shoulder and knee pads and no one is saying those should be mandated. It's just a level of risk you assume. And according to doctors, the benefits outweigh the risks.

"Clothing. Sensible footwear. Enough LED power to irradiate a small village. Outside the safe confines of the World Naked Bike Ride, these are the items that should probably be required by law to ride a bicycle. But wearing a helmet shouldn’t be one of them, say doctors in the unexpected results of a British Medical Journal survey.

A poll of 1,427 of the journal’s readers revealed more than two thirds would prefer helmets remain a personal choice and not required by law. Reasons for the opposition to helmet mandates varied. Some respondents argued that the research on helmets reducing the risk of head injury is too inconclusive to support a new law. And there have been studies, such as one conducted by a Bath University professor in 2006, which found passing drivers give less room to helmeted cyclists than they do to those not wearing helmets."

"If people are forced to wear helmets they may give up cycling altogether and lose the health benefits of regular exercise, they warned.

More than two thirds of the respected journal's readers said they opposed compulsory helmets for adults.

One respondent in the poll of 1,427 people said: "It gives out the message that cycling is dangerous, which it is not. The evidence that cycling helmets work to reduce injury is not conclusive.

"What has, however, been shown is that laws that make wearing helmets compulsory decrease cycling activity. Cycling is a healthy activity and cyclists live longer on average than non-cyclists."

Another added: "Since nowhere with a helmet law can show any reduction in risk to cyclists, only a reduction in cyclists, why would anyone want to bring in a law for something which is clearly not effective at reducing the risk to cyclists?"

If all the time, money and effort spent promoting helmets over the past 20 years in the USA had instead been invested in bike lines, we'd have many fewer dead cyclists today. I'm pretty sure that's true even if you exclude money spent on commercial advertising.

And if you don't have time to read the summary, this sentence tells you what you need to know:
According to the new studies, no overall effect of bicycle helmets could be found when injuries to head, face or neck
are considered as a whole.

I was cycling home past the Silver Spring Metro tonight (on the sidewalk, slowly) and another cyclist was traveling the other direction at a walking pace, talking with two pedestrians. He had no light of any kind on his bike. They saw my lights--helmet front and back, bar headlight, two flashers in back, and started talking about it with each other. The one utterance i heard clearly was the cyclist, saying, "I'm underlit." Yeah, cycling with no light of any kind, on a Friday night around 10 p.m. with all the crazies out driving around. Yes. You're underlit, buddy.

I have nothing against helmet use. Seriously. I have one and often use it. The problem is the completely irrational way in which "wearing a helmet" has become a proxy for "bicycle safety".

As often as the helmet Nazis repeat it, it still doesn't make it true. And no, quoting your sister-in-law who's an ER nurse and "has seen a lot of head injuries" doesn't get us any closer to the truth, thanks.

methinks one equally accurately substitute the word "drivers" for "riders". Takes two to do this dance.

Ah, sure, but we need to take a step back and acknowledge that novice cyclists can get themselves killed. Novice drivers will merely kill other people, so they're not quite as much of a public health issue.

The problem is the completely irrational way in which "wearing a helmet" has become a proxy for "bicycle safety".

I think helmet use (or lack thereof) is actually, in drivers' minds, a proxy for "bicyclist stupidity". This is why the stories always mention whether the cyclist was wearing a helmet. Drivers universally assume that it is stupid for a cyclist not to wear one, so when a helmetless cyclist gets creamed by a car, it's easier for them to justify to themselves--the cyclist was just stupid and he got in the way.

wrt lights, unlike in Europe, in the US, the CPSC does not require that bikes be outfitted with front and rear lights. The industry likely would fight it hard, but such a requirement is the only way to go really.

wrt more training for cops, I was at a conference on bike sharing and one of the presentations was by the Denver RTD and they did specialized training for bus drivers in advance of the opening of Denver Bike Share, because there would be more bikes on the roads, likely ridden by less able cyclists, and they wanted bus drivers to be prepared.

I thought that was interesting.

For all the complaints that riders make about WMATA drivers, they do get specialized training wrt bikes, and so do heavy vehicle drivers for DCG, although not necessarily all agencies. (And I think the bus contractors for DCPS should get such training and I doubt they do.)

I've been having issue with bus drivers lately. One basically forced me out of my lane multiple times, and when I told him at the next light to stop doing it, informed me that he was permitted to do it because there was no bike lane on that street.

I filed a formal complaint, although we know how weak the process is at WMATA.